The following patent disclosure includes material that is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction of the disclosure by any person as it appears in the records of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, but otherwise reserves all rights to the copyright whatsoever.
The invention relates generally to information retrieval from data repositories, and more particularly to a method and system for pre-filling search criteria from the prior visit into a search form, whereby the user does not need to remember or reenter previous values or actively store them.
As a society, we are increasingly becoming both dependent on and overloaded with information, especially data that is stored in computer databases or full-text collections. As the quantity of information stored in these data repositories increases, the complexity of retrieving relevant information also increases. To locate information, users search general collections (e.g., AltaVista, Excite, InfoSeek, Lycos, Yahoo, etc.) as well as specialized sources which may be implemented with back-end databases, such as those dedicated to locating employment opportunities (e.g., CareerBuilder, CareerPath, Headhunter.net, HotJobs, Monster.com, etc.). According to recent studies from technology analysts (e.g., the Jupiter Group and Forrester Research), Internet searching is the most common online activity next to sending/receiving e-mail communications.
Data repositories may take on several forms, including relational databases, hierarchical databases, and flat-file databases, all of which support and may require searching within specific fields or columns, full-text collections which may or may not support searching within fields or delimited portions of documents that are represented as fields, and/or one or more documents. As used herein, the term xe2x80x9cdata elementxe2x80x9d refers to a database field, a delimited portion of a document, meta information associated with a document, or to an entire document. As used herein, the term xe2x80x9cdata objectxe2x80x9d refers to a database record, a document, or some other grouping of associated data elements. As used herein, the term xe2x80x9cdata unitxe2x80x9d refers to the value or contents of a data element. As used herein, the term xe2x80x9cpagexe2x80x9d refers to a document or page on the World Wide Wide or other public or private network, e.g. a continuously scrollable body of information which may or may not include so-called xe2x80x9cframes,xe2x80x9d (i.e. portions that do not scroll automatically when other portions of the page are scrolled).
Although many searches are xe2x80x9cad hoc,xe2x80x9d using completely different search criteria for each visit, other searches are likely to use similar or even identical search criteria on subsequent visits. Examples include searching job openings, resumes of job seekers, apartments for rent, houses for sale, etc. Most search Web sites force users to enter search criteria from scratch each time, wasting time and increasing frustration.
To address these problems, some search Web sites let you save search criteria by name and recall the named search criteria in a subsequent visit. While this approach is useful when users have multiple sets of search criteria, it still requires that the user explicitly save the search at one point, and explicitly invoke the named search on a subsequent visitxe2x80x94which in turn usually requires visiting a page other than the usual search page.
In summary, the prior art does not provide a way for multiple search terms to be saved and recalled automatically, forcing users to spend additional time and energy providing or selecting search criteria.
In the present invention, a computer with appropriate software automatically saves a user""s search criteria and pre-fills the search criteria into the search form on the user""s next visit.
The present invention overcomes the prior art limitations by automatically saving and recalling a user""s search criteria.
It is an object of the invention to reduce the time and frustration associated with repeated searches, by saving the user from having to remember exactly what search criteria was previously entered, or from having to reenter that search criteria, or from having to explicitly store and recall that search criteria.